The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted Crocs in a video series looking at how successful companies generate revenue. Now – as the headline suggests – Crocs are certainly polarizing (but the kind of polarizing that’s fun, in my opinion, and not the kind we so often talk about these days in regard to politicization of so many topics). I was a competitive swimmer, so Crocs in their original heyday were pretty big in the crowds I hung around for practicality purposes – they were great on the pool deck but you could also wear them with a pair of socks when going home. But even then, they were considered ugly by many. Some of us, like me, just didn’t care. And eventually the “ugly” opinions were enough to make the shoe mostly obsolete for many years. That is until recently. I wasn’t surprised to hear in the Journal’s video that the company reached a record annual revenue in 2021 because I’ve seen the shoes come back in style with my own two eyes. But how did the old fad make its way back into the mainstream? The sudden shift to working from home also shifted what consumers wore. Comfort-first fashion has been emphasized – you maybe needed shoes to wear around the house, but they didn’t have to be nice-looking because no one would see them on Zoom calls.